Virtual Conference
Imagine it is time for your yearly conference and parts of your business are experiencing a downturn in growth. Or, you suddenly need to communicate important information with several foreign subsidiaries and have limited time to do so. What can you do?
An organisation I worked with faced such a dilemma with regards to their yearly conference. The staff who would normally attend such a conference were based all over the world, so on top of venue, speaker and related costs, there were travel costs as well. A budget had been allocated, but it was felt inappropriate to go ahead as planned. We brainstormed alternatives and came up with the idea to run a two day international video conference.
At that time (1996) we were unable to find anyone who had done this sort of thing before. Our own experience extended only to running a video meeting with 5 European nodes for an hour. Most of us had found that experience rather frustrating. We had eight nodes: Japan, Israel, France, Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland and the USA. These nodes were in conference rooms in our own offices, not at outside venues. There were 180 people taking part across 14 time zones.
From previous experience, it was clear we would have to be very strict with structure and timing. Twenty to thirty people sitting in a room watching a video screen would not be able to concentrate for more than about thirty minutes. This was the guideline for designing the conference.
Each node had a facilitator and a technical support person who was in constant contact (via headphones) with the bridge. An outside company provided the bridge. There were two conference speakers in different nodes. The senior management was spread around the nodes as well. It began at 9:00 a.m. UK time, which was 3:00 a.m. in the USA, 10:00 a.m. on the continent, 11:00 a.m. in Israel and 5:00 p.m. in Japan. The node in England acted the 'chairman' role and began the day with an energiser. Each node then introduced itself, one by one, facilitated by the English node. In practise, each node was called in turn and the others would activate the mute button. Only the presenting node had mute off. Otherwise there would be no controlling who was on the screen; the system goes to where the noise comes from. This would mean constant swapping between nodes as someone made a noise.
There was a dialogue between two senior managers on different continents regarding vision for the function. This worked very well. It was followed by a break where each node discussed what they had just heard. Then the main session began with one of the speakers, speaking from France. It was broken into 20 minute sessions during which he presented followed by 10 minutes working in individual nodes and feeding back to the group (as described above), either thoughts or questions.
The conference finished at 5:00 p.m. UK time (1:00 a.m. in Japan) with a feedback session from the total conference. The feedback was surprising; people found it useful and far more human than anyone had expected.
In the evening, each node had special events planned. The next morning began two hours earlier and each group presented something about the evenings fun. The second day preceded as the first, the speaker was in Israel. At the end of the conference, each node presented how they felt about the two days and gave a culturally appropriate good-bye. It was surprisingly hard to say good-bye and turn off the machines after such an intense two days.
This sort of conference cannot completely replace a face-to-face conference. While networking was possible (and in greater depth as there were fewer people in each node), it was restricted to those present at each node. An annual conference is frequently the only forum for meeting some colleagues. While one could see other nodes and the speakers, the video conferencing technology of today is such that the picture was usually blurred, or the speaker's lips moved moments after one heard his voice (quite disconcerting). Sometimes the image froze, only to return after several seconds, missing gestures or movement. Any quick movements were blurred. The first energiser was an aerobic session, which was impossible to follow by other nodes (who had a good laugh for them and a learning point for the organisers).
One must be very organised to run such a conference. Timing is critical and must be explicit. Any group work has to be prepared so that it is immediately evident, across cultures, what has to be done. Humour is a must, to help make up for distance. If one is not careful to plan humour in, it can easily become very dehumanising. The interactions between nodes are quite complicated and take time (this needs to be planned in). Technical glitches need to be prepared fir. One cannot put as much content into such a conference as in a face-to-face conference. On the other hand, more people were able to participate than before.
Each node developed a distinctive personality over the two days. Cultural diversity was evident and fun. To get benefit, this needs to be acknowledged and celebrated. The nature of the medium together with our work to keep it as human as possible meant that we could not take the conference or ourselves as seriously as we might have done which was experienced very positively.
While there was a saving in monetary terms, video conferencing to this scale is not cheap. There was a saving on travel costs and travel time which was considerable, especially for our Japanese and American colleagues. It was fun to try something new.
Would I do it again? Yes, definitely. I would plan more time for the nodes to work together (perhaps in the evenings), organise more breaks and try to find an off-site venue, as being in the office was not easy. Would I recommend others to try it? Again yes, but I emphasise the amount of planning and preparation needed beforehand, far more than would be needed for a conventional conference. Good luck to anyone who wishes to try it, let me know how it goes.